Jewelweed (35 page)

“Good man,” said the hermit.

“Mr. Mortal, this is my best friend, Ivan,” said August when they reached him.

“Hello, Ivan,” he said, extending a furry paw.

“Hey,” said Ivan. He set the duffel bag on the ground and shook hands with the creature. Pulling the book out of the bag, he handed it to him. “Here, this is for you.”

Lester held the torch closer.

“Oh, I've seen that one around,” he said. “There's supposed to be sequels. Do you have those as well?”

“I'll bring them next time,” said August.

They followed him beneath the trees to his hut, the torch making the leaves and grass glimmer orange. “Here we are,” he said, and reached into an overgrown hillside. Then he set the torch into a holder and walked into what appeared to be an entrance. “Come on,” he said.

Ivan had never walked into a hill before, and it reminded him of the root cellar behind the equipment shed at the Roebuck place. It certainly smelled like that. The tabletop and the wooden counter seemed clean, however, and there was a general sense of orderliness.

“Can I get you something to drink? A cup of tea, perhaps?”

“No thank you,” said August.

“Why do you have so many guns?” asked Ivan.

“Each one's different, I suppose. I didn't intend to have this many. They just added up.”

“There must be a hundred,” Ivan said.

“Not quite that many.”

“So where are these statues August told me about?” asked Ivan, looking around.

“I set them in the back room. Let me get the wagon.”

He went back outside. While he was gone August hurried over to a closed door on the other side of the room and put his ear against it. Ivan joined him, but neither of them could hear anything on the other side. Ivan tried the knob, but it was locked.

They heard rattling and the hermit came back in.

“That isn't a wagon,” Ivan said. “It's a shopping cart.”

“In truth, yes,” he said. “But I put bigger axles and wheels on it.”

“How far do we have to go?” asked Ivan.

“Not more than a quarter mile. Are you up for it?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I'll bring them out,” he said, and disappeared again, this time into the room in back.

“Someday,” whispered August, “we need to see what's in that locked room.”

Ivan was dumbfounded when the hermit carried the first statue out of the back room. August had told him how lifelike the carvings were, but it was still a shock to see one. In the lamplight it looked almost as if the hermit was carrying a real person.

He set it down beside the shopping cart and went after the other one. The boys were both shocked when he returned with it.

“That's awful,” said Ivan. “How do you make them look so real?”

“You can do almost anything with enough time. Now you boys give me a hand and we'll wrap these figures in some sheets and then tie them into the wagon.”

“Why are you wrapping them up?” asked Ivan.

“So they don't get scratched.”

“I thought you were going to burn them anyway.”

“We are,” he said. “But we don't want to bruise them beforehand.”

Then the hermit went off to find more sheets and Ivan whispered to August, “Do you know what he's talking about?”

“I believe so,” said August. “The ancient Hebrew temple cult demanded that all sacrificed animals be without blemish, especially on the day of atonement. Other primitive religious rituals of appeasement had similar requirements.”

“I knew I shouldn't ask.”

A short time later they were rolling the full grocery cart through the melon field. The hermit led with his torch, while Ivan pushed and August pulled. Above them, a thunderhead moved in from the west. It became harder to see without moonlight, and the boys began bumping into melons. Then the sky started booming and flashing. Wind rattled the leaves on the melon plants like flapping ground-wings.

“Doesn't this seem a little strange?” Ivan whispered to August. “I mean, who would have thought we'd be out here in the middle of nowhere, pushing two mummies through a field in a shopping cart?”

“You're right,” said August.

At the far end of the melon field, they followed the hermit along a path leading uphill through a stand of pine trees. “What are those?” Ivan asked.

August pointed his flashlight at a tree. The beam hit a shiny object.

“It's a can,” he said, and examined it more closely. “There's a photograph taped to the outside.”

It was a snapshot of the hermit when he was much younger, maybe just out of school, dressed in a uniform and smiling proudly.

A little later, there was another can tied to a low-hanging limb, and another picture.

“The path is marked with these old soup cans,” whispered Ivan.

In the picture taped to this one, the hermit was older, wearing a different uniform, standing with other soldiers.

Farther along, more cans and pictures hung from the trees, marking the trail. The hermit was progressively older in the snapshots, until he appeared almost as he was now, with a beard and long hair. In some, the scenery behind him looked like a jungle, in later ones like a desert. The hats and the uniforms changed color too.

Then they started down the hill. The rocky ground grew thick with stunted trees and bushes. Large jagged stones lurched up out of the ground.

They came around a sandstone corner and saw light glowing faintly
from somewhere in front of them. After another turn between rocks, the boys found themselves on the edge of a steep drop-off, where the rock fell away into darkness. Around this hole, which looked to be forty or fifty feet across, the hermit had put burning candles inside brown paper bags weighted with sand.

“Down there,” said the hermit, holding his torch over the seemingly impenetrable blackness.

Milton flew in and out of the torchlight.

August aimed his flashlight down to a rocky bottom some twenty feet below. The sides of the hold were steep and jagged.

“How are we going to get these mummies down there?” asked Ivan. “It's impossible.”

“No it's not,” said the hermit. “One of us will go down, the other two will stay up here and lower the cart with the rope.”

“I'm not going down there alone in the dark,” said Ivan.

“I'd prefer to remain up here with Ivan,” added August.

Lester laughed. “I'll go down,” he said. “You boys lower one of the figures at a time. Otherwise the cart might be too heavy.”

“We can do that,” said August.

“Good man,” said the hermit. Then he started down the rock sides, holding the torch in one hand and moving slowly from foothold to foothold. Five minutes later, he reached the bottom.

“All clear,” he said, his voice echoing up to them. “Lower one down, boys.”

Ivan suggested they wrap the rope around a nearby tree so the trunk would act like a pulley, but August had problems with that. He said the rubbing would injure the tree.

“Then we need gloves,” said Ivan. “This rope will tear up our hands.”

“We can use our shirts,” said August, and they did.

“Be careful, boys. It's heavy.”

“Not too heavy for us,” said Ivan.

After one mummy was lowered into the stone bowl, the hermit took the statue out of the cart and gently set it beside him. Then the boys pulled the cart up and sent the second one down.

“Good work, men, now pull up the wagon and leave it there. Then come down.”

There weren't a lot of places to step, so it took August and Ivan a
while going down. After they reached the bottom they could see why the hermit had chosen this place.

“This is stupendous,” whispered August. “Look.” He pointed up.

The thunderhead had blown over, and above them the full moon and stars stood out with unusual clarity. The stone bowl seemed to magnify everything in the sky. The bagged candles were just out of sight above the rim, providing a flickering glow.

There were two flat boulders sitting side by side in the middle of the bowl. After unwrapping the figures, the hermit balanced them on the stones and adjusted their positions so they faced each other. Then he brought out a handful of kindling from a hollowed-out place in the side of the rock and piled them between the legs of each statue.

“It's going to take more than that,” said Ivan. “A lot more.”

“They'll burn,” replied Lester. “While I was working on them I rubbed raw linseed oil in to keep the wood from cracking. They're soaked through.”

The three of them stood back and looked at the figures facing each other. The light from the torch made it seem as if the stone bowl were slowly breathing in and out.

“You know what this feels like?” said August.

“What?” they both asked.

“Jonah inside the whale,” said August.

“Only you would think of that,” said Ivan.

“I thought he would be here,” said August to the hermit.

“Oh, the child is here. I thought you knew.”

“Where is he?”

“Just over the rim.”

“Why doesn't he come down?”

“Probably studying Ivan.”

“Me?”

“You're quicker than your friend August, more impulsive.”

Then the hermit reached into his pocket and pulled out a homemade straw man, some six or eight inches tall, with two bristled legs, arms, and a head. Stepping up onto one of the boulders, he tied a thread around the neck of both figures and hung the straw man between them.

“What's that for?” asked Ivan.

“That represents me,” he said, taking a match from his pocket.

“Wait, Mr. Mortal,” said August. “Please wait until the Wild Boy comes down. I think he wants to be here. Ivan and I will stand as far to this side as we can.”

They did just that, and then August handed Ivan the jar of jam they had brought and told Ivan to take it—slowly—all the way to the other side of the bowl and set it down there.

Ivan could feel everyone watching him as he walked. Then he set the jar down, looked up, and went back to August.

“It's all right,” said August in his normal voice, looking up to the rim. “You can come down now.”

“I thought you said he couldn't talk,” whispered Ivan.

There was a quick movement along the rim. The slim figure froze, looking from side to side. And all at once the child came down, leaping from place to place. Staying mostly in the shadows cast by the flickering light from the torch, he moved like an animal, quick and wary.

“There he is,” whispered Ivan breathlessly. “There he is.”

Ivan couldn't see him very well, but it looked as if he was barefoot, and he was unusually skilled in keeping the hermit, or the statues, between him and the boys' line of sight. Ivan was able to glimpse a part of his clothes and some shaggy hair, a thin arm or leg, but he kept mostly hidden as he made his way over to the jar of jam.

They heard the snap of the sealed lid coming off, and then there was nothing but silence.

“Can you see him?” whispered Ivan.

“No,” said August.

“Did he taste the jam?”

“I don't know.”

Next the hermit wrapped both the sheets around himself until he was all white from top to bottom, except where his face stuck out in an explosion of fur. He began walking slowly around the two figures, reaching out and touching them, and talking to them. As he walked the Wild Boy moved, keeping his body behind the walking mummy.

The hermit explained to the statues how much he appreciated them, how they had stayed with him longer than other figures in his past. He thanked the bigger, noble statue for giving him a desire to mold his character in a certain direction. He thanked the dying man for a glimpse
of his own death and an understanding of his own evil. And then he began saying good-bye to them.

“He's talking like they're real,” Ivan whispered to August. “He really is crazy.”

“It's ceremonial talk,” said August. “Like in a theater.”

The hermit took out the match again, struck it, waited until the flame burned steady, and finally touched it to the straw man. It caught right away and the small flame crept upward, growing bigger quickly. Soon, all of it was burning. One of the threads holding the straw man between the two figures burned in two; the flaming man swung down, hanging only from the neck of the heroic figure. Then the remaining length of thread burned and the dark clump of flame fell onto the kindling. The flame spread into the sticks, then to a leg.

The fire grew in a fierce manner, yellow and orange flames leaping up, madly seeking more paint and oiled wood. When both legs were in full flame the fire spread onto the painted wooden hands and arms, peeling off the color. Soon the entire figure blazed like a giant wick and the heat began to peel paint from the other figure. Then it too caught fire and the sides of the stone bowl glowed fearfully from the dancing light. August and Ivan were sweating from the heat. Milton began flying in and out of the bowl, diving down and out, feeding on all the bugs that were attracted to the light.